Personally, I would base matchmaking on three different criteria (number of wins, deck strength, and collection size)
First, I would use collection power and deck power to divide players into four player pools
1. Bad Deck + Small collection = new player
2. Good Deck + Small collection = Semi-Competitive
3. Bad deck + Huge collection = casual game
4. Good Deck + Huge collection = competitive
Further, if you get a sizeable winning streak, you would be matched against players one level up.
@SardoNespa: I honestly do not understand the incentives for stalling for all.
First, why not quit instead of stalling? If it only takes you 2 minutes to load up and recognize an unwinnable matchup and 10 minutes to stall a game to the best of your ability, you could see five times as many decks by just quitting. Even if the matchmaker throws you against unwinnable opponents 90% of the time, you would still encounter far more games that you could actually play (and would gain wins at a comparable rate if you are a decent player). While one could argue that it shouldn't have to be your job to wade through a messy matchmaker system, you are making the conscious choice to frustrate other people instead of sitting with your frustration on your own, seeing a larger number of actual games, and claiming similar levels of reward.
Also, how do you know how optimized your opponent's deck is? Do you cast unmoored ego and search their library to make sure that your opponent is a "five-thousand-dollar-paying-playing-since-beta-arena-whale" before you start stalling? Did you somehow divine that the Chainwhirler your opponent just dropped is part of a playset instead of being the only copy owned by a player trying to ape a successful strategy with their own limited resources? Is stalling against anyone with $5 to spend on special sleeves fair game? In most cases, we don't know how optimized our opponent's decks are (unless they are a famous streamer, in which case trolling their streams with stalling is totally uncool). We can see what archetype a player is going for but we have no idea if they actually have all of the cards until the very late game, at which point stalling is petty but not too disruptive.
TLDR:
1. If playing the "matchmaker lottery" has a chance of providing winnable games, you can't really claim that you are winning in the only way you can.
2. Even if you "recognize" a deck or archetype, you can't really automatically assume that it is a fully-optimized version as you might if you saw it at Friday Night Magic. Using a couple cards that you see to assume that a player "deserves" to be stalled is not nice.
I'm sorry if any of that sounds mean. You claim up above that you generally do not do this (at least not intentionally) in most games so I'm not really chewing you out in particular. Just trying to wrap my mind around the mindset here as you seem to be playing the devil's advocate.
I like it. I don't think it necessarily has to be other creatures only.
I actually considered using the exact wording of dense foliage
Foliage Weaver
Creature- Dryad Shaman
Creatures can't be the target of spells.
3/2
But that design sets off all sort of alarm bells for me. It all but shuts down Push/Bolt/Path (making it incredibly hard to deal with beaters like goyf or shadow in modern) on top of randomly hosing bogles and infect while producing a cost-efficient body that Collected Company can flash in at instant speed.
While it doesn't do much against degenerate combos, burn, or humans/spirits... This version of the card has the potential to wreck havoc in Modern.
Hmm... one small problem with doing a colorless deck is that it becomes impossible to do secondary commanders.
While Wizards has thrown out a lot of commanders in the last two years that don’t quite meet the full color identity of the deck (Xantcha, Varchild, Wasitori, Arixmathes, Ninja Girl, both versions of Taigam, and that white equipment cat)... you really can’t do that with colorless as there’s nothing to take away.
Conversely, the mana base might also be a problem. Using all nonbasics would drain value away from the rest of the deck and giving players a way to pick up whole bunch of wastes would similarly risk driving up the demand through the roof as they’re currently (at least) twice as valuable as any other form of basic land.
Neither of these are HUGE problems but I just wanted to point out that there are some challenges here.
With Modern Horizons just around the corner, wanted to submit an idea for a card that I would personally love to see.
Foliage Shaper
Creature- Dryad (R)
Other creatures can't be the target of spells.
3/2
In other words, Dense Foliage on a stick. I imagine that bogles and infect might have trouble with this guy (if it hits the board early enough) but I don't think that it's too powerful.
The problem with multicolored ramp is that it's... kind of lacking.
I take a quick look at low-cost (CMC 3 or less) ramp cards that are exactly two colors and that always ramp (unlike coiling oracle) and don't rely on basic lands (unlike the borderposts) and that gets me... not a lot.
Atzocan Seer, Draconic Disciple , and Leyline Prowler are the ones that pop out to me. I think that I'll use the disciple in place of manamorphose but I'm not seeing a lot that I would really want to use in place of colorless ramp. Are there cards that I'm missing?
As far as testing, I typically do most of my playtesting on Forge and I am waiting for the newest update to let me pilot this thing.
When I first saw Niv-Mizzet Reborn, I was fairly underwhelmed. While the legend could potentially “draw” a decent number of cards, it is a mythic WUBRG legend that acts as a generic 6/6 flyer after it ETBs. When I realized that the card filtering is an ETB effect, however, I got thinking. While blinking is normally the job of Azorius, what if a 5-color deck was built to spam that ETB as frequently as possible? A deck with equal guild representation to maximize this card advantage engine? A deck that can reasonably dig 10 cards deep to grab the next engine pieces with each trigger…
Out of that thought process came Niv-Mizzet: Five-Color Excavator, the deck that never stops digging.
To be completely fair, this is NOT a competitive deck. This derpy “toolbox” list run every possible tool to spam Niv’s etb as many times as possible. From flickering to clones to self-bounce and reanimation, we are taking every road. The fact that we are running cards like Horned Kavu, Lava Zombie, and Cauldron Haze shows the lengths that we are willing to go to keep the gravy train going.
Thankfully, we aren’t exactly a one-trick pony. All of those tricks that we are using on Niv-Mizzet happen to work with quite a few other ETB creatures in our library… and we have a random infinite combo in the form of Aurelia + Brago that you might stumble across… and running 5-color goodstuff allows us to use a number of 1-card engines like The Scarab God and Assemble the Legion. While this deck is far more “cute” than competitive, it is still possible to randomly go off.
Hey there. I wanted to see if I could create fairly unambiguous text that would allow a free card to ignore additional costs (such as commander tax) without specifically naming the command zone as Derevi does.
Stalwart Grouvh
Legendary Creature- Treefolk
Reach, Trample, Vigilance
If you control at least four more lands than each other player and have not cast any creature spells this turn, you may cast Stalwart Grouvh without paying any costs.
8/3
Is this wording ("without paying any costs" instead of "without paying its mana cost") fully grokkable? Are there any ambiguous rule situations that would make it unclear what this does? Is there any better way to word this?
Edit: just realized that this is a terrible idea even if it does work due to sac outlets. Never mind, I guess.
"This only reduces the amount of colored and colorless mana you pay." There is still ab bit of wording from the previous version.
Also really neat card.
Fixed and thanks a ton!
Personally, I think that I'm going to take away the activated ability reduction as not many colorless creatures have abilities that cost colored mana (I can only think of spellskite)
Shaggorath, Gate to Eternity
Legendary Creature- Eldrazi
Colorless spells cost less to cast. This effect reduces only the amount of colored mana you pay.
Whenever you cast an Eldrazi creature spell, target opponent sacrifices a permanent.
5/5
Just a loose idea that I wanted to throw out for a while now, creating a tribal eldrazi legend (based on Shub Niggurath of Lovecraftian fame) that allows for all of your devoid creatures/spells. Wasn't sure if producing a non-titan eldrazi legend would feel a bit too odd but I wanted to finally push this out and see how people feel.
While I've loved the idea of a colorless EDH deck, it is impossible to stick in the sort of secondary commander (such as Varchild, Wasitori, or Xantcha) that we've seen in nearly every commander deck for the past 2 years. A one-color deck could potentially have a colorless secondary commander but wizards couldn't slip a 4th legendary creature (whether old or new) into a colorless deck without making a 4th commander option for that deck.
First, I would use collection power and deck power to divide players into four player pools
1. Bad Deck + Small collection = new player
2. Good Deck + Small collection = Semi-Competitive
3. Bad deck + Huge collection = casual game
4. Good Deck + Huge collection = competitive
Further, if you get a sizeable winning streak, you would be matched against players one level up.
Still a beast with things like greater good but this guy now seems somewhat reasonable.
First, why not quit instead of stalling? If it only takes you 2 minutes to load up and recognize an unwinnable matchup and 10 minutes to stall a game to the best of your ability, you could see five times as many decks by just quitting. Even if the matchmaker throws you against unwinnable opponents 90% of the time, you would still encounter far more games that you could actually play (and would gain wins at a comparable rate if you are a decent player). While one could argue that it shouldn't have to be your job to wade through a messy matchmaker system, you are making the conscious choice to frustrate other people instead of sitting with your frustration on your own, seeing a larger number of actual games, and claiming similar levels of reward.
Also, how do you know how optimized your opponent's deck is? Do you cast unmoored ego and search their library to make sure that your opponent is a "five-thousand-dollar-paying-playing-since-beta-arena-whale" before you start stalling? Did you somehow divine that the Chainwhirler your opponent just dropped is part of a playset instead of being the only copy owned by a player trying to ape a successful strategy with their own limited resources? Is stalling against anyone with $5 to spend on special sleeves fair game? In most cases, we don't know how optimized our opponent's decks are (unless they are a famous streamer, in which case trolling their streams with stalling is totally uncool). We can see what archetype a player is going for but we have no idea if they actually have all of the cards until the very late game, at which point stalling is petty but not too disruptive.
TLDR:
1. If playing the "matchmaker lottery" has a chance of providing winnable games, you can't really claim that you are winning in the only way you can.
2. Even if you "recognize" a deck or archetype, you can't really automatically assume that it is a fully-optimized version as you might if you saw it at Friday Night Magic. Using a couple cards that you see to assume that a player "deserves" to be stalled is not nice.
I'm sorry if any of that sounds mean. You claim up above that you generally do not do this (at least not intentionally) in most games so I'm not really chewing you out in particular. Just trying to wrap my mind around the mindset here as you seem to be playing the devil's advocate.
I actually considered using the exact wording of dense foliage
Foliage Weaver
Creature- Dryad Shaman
Creatures can't be the target of spells.
3/2
But that design sets off all sort of alarm bells for me. It all but shuts down Push/Bolt/Path (making it incredibly hard to deal with beaters like goyf or shadow in modern) on top of randomly hosing bogles and infect while producing a cost-efficient body that Collected Company can flash in at instant speed.
While it doesn't do much against degenerate combos, burn, or humans/spirits... This version of the card has the potential to wreck havoc in Modern.
While Wizards has thrown out a lot of commanders in the last two years that don’t quite meet the full color identity of the deck (Xantcha, Varchild, Wasitori, Arixmathes, Ninja Girl, both versions of Taigam, and that white equipment cat)... you really can’t do that with colorless as there’s nothing to take away.
Conversely, the mana base might also be a problem. Using all nonbasics would drain value away from the rest of the deck and giving players a way to pick up whole bunch of wastes would similarly risk driving up the demand through the roof as they’re currently (at least) twice as valuable as any other form of basic land.
Neither of these are HUGE problems but I just wanted to point out that there are some challenges here.
Foliage Shaper
Creature- Dryad (R)
Other creatures can't be the target of spells.
3/2
In other words, Dense Foliage on a stick. I imagine that bogles and infect might have trouble with this guy (if it hits the board early enough) but I don't think that it's too powerful.
Luck like that is really awesome!
I take a quick look at low-cost (CMC 3 or less) ramp cards that are exactly two colors and that always ramp (unlike coiling oracle) and don't rely on basic lands (unlike the borderposts) and that gets me... not a lot.
Atzocan Seer, Draconic Disciple , and Leyline Prowler are the ones that pop out to me. I think that I'll use the disciple in place of manamorphose but I'm not seeing a lot that I would really want to use in place of colorless ramp. Are there cards that I'm missing?
As far as testing, I typically do most of my playtesting on Forge and I am waiting for the newest update to let me pilot this thing.
When I first saw Niv-Mizzet Reborn, I was fairly underwhelmed. While the legend could potentially “draw” a decent number of cards, it is a mythic WUBRG legend that acts as a generic 6/6 flyer after it ETBs. When I realized that the card filtering is an ETB effect, however, I got thinking. While blinking is normally the job of Azorius, what if a 5-color deck was built to spam that ETB as frequently as possible? A deck with equal guild representation to maximize this card advantage engine? A deck that can reasonably dig 10 cards deep to grab the next engine pieces with each trigger…
Out of that thought process came Niv-Mizzet: Five-Color Excavator, the deck that never stops digging.
To be completely fair, this is NOT a competitive deck. This derpy “toolbox” list run every possible tool to spam Niv’s etb as many times as possible. From flickering to clones to self-bounce and reanimation, we are taking every road. The fact that we are running cards like Horned Kavu, Lava Zombie, and Cauldron Haze shows the lengths that we are willing to go to keep the gravy train going.
Thankfully, we aren’t exactly a one-trick pony. All of those tricks that we are using on Niv-Mizzet happen to work with quite a few other ETB creatures in our library… and we have a random infinite combo in the form of Aurelia + Brago that you might stumble across… and running 5-color goodstuff allows us to use a number of 1-card engines like The Scarab God and Assemble the Legion. While this deck is far more “cute” than competitive, it is still possible to randomly go off.
I hope someone out there enjoys.
5 Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Azorius
2 Turn to Mist
2 Mistmeadow Witch
4 Brago, King Eternal
5 Venser, the Sojourner
7 Emergency Powers
Orzhov
2 Cauldron Haze
4 Purgatory
5 Obzedat’s Aid
7 Debtors’ Knell
8 Ashen Rider
Boros
2 Boros Charm
2 Legion’s Initiative
5 Assemble the Legion
6 Leave//Chance
6 Aurelia, the Warleader
Selesnya
2 Saffi Eriksdotter
3 Fleetfoot Panther
3 Knight of Autumn
3 Aura Shards
5 Mirari’s Wake
Dimir
2 Cavern Harpy
4 Hostage Taker
5 Consuming Aberration
5 The Scarab God
6 Dragonlord Silumgar
Izzet
3 Protean Raider
3 Dack Fayden
3 Saheeli Rai
4 Dack’s Duplicate
6 The Locust God
Simic
4 Altered Ego
5 Repudiate//Replicate
6 Progenitor Mimic
6 Prime Speaker Zegana
7 Tishana, Voice of Thunder
3 Lava Zombie
3 Anathemancer
3 Kolaghan’s Command
6 Grave Upheaval
7 Bladewing the Risen
Golgari
1 Deathrite Shaman
3 Gaze of Granite
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Journey to Eternity
5 Underrealm Lich
Gruul
2 Manamorphose
2 Horned Kavu
3 Rhythm of the Wild
4 Decimate
6 Vengeful Rebirth
Guildless
1 Sol Ring
2 Farseek
2 Nature’s Lore
2 Joiner Adept
2 Prismatic Omen
2 Fellwar Stone
3 Chromatic Lantern
3 Coalition Relic
3 Commander Sphere
4 Urza’s Filter
5 Dragon Arch
5 Tome of the Guildpact
11 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
Lands
1 Arid Mesa
1 Blood Crypt
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Breeding Pool
1 City of Brass
1 Command Tower
1 Flooded Strange
1 Forbidden Orchard
1 Forest
1 Godless Shirne
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Island
1 Mana Confluence
1 Marsh Flats
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Path of Ancestry
1 Pillar of the Paruns
1 Plains
1 Polluted Delta
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Steam Vents
1 Stomping Ground
1 Swamp
1 Temple Garden
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Vivid Crag
1 Vivid Creek
1 Vivid Grove
1 Vivid Marsh
1 Vivid Meadow
1 Watery Grave
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills
Stalwart Grouvh
Legendary Creature- Treefolk
Reach, Trample, Vigilance
If you control at least four more lands than each other player and have not cast any creature spells this turn, you may cast Stalwart Grouvh without paying any costs.
8/3
Is this wording ("without paying any costs" instead of "without paying its mana cost") fully grokkable? Are there any ambiguous rule situations that would make it unclear what this does? Is there any better way to word this?
Edit: just realized that this is a terrible idea even if it does work due to sac outlets. Never mind, I guess.
Fixed and thanks a ton!
Personally, I think that I'm going to take away the activated ability reduction as not many colorless creatures have abilities that cost colored mana (I can only think of spellskite)
Also forgot about cheerios shenanigans and changed the second ability to eldrazi creatures as recommended.
While a Fist of Suns effect for colorless spells sounds nice, I'm worried that it would just seem like a worse Jodah, which is already cheaper.
Edit: let me try a more intimidating version.
Shaggorath, Gate to Eternity
Legendary Creature- Eldrazi
Colorless Spells cost you
Whenever you cast a colorless spell with a converted mana cost of 6 or higher, each opponent exiles a permanent they control of their choice.
7/7
Legendary Creature- Eldrazi
Colorless spells cost
Whenever you cast an Eldrazi creature spell, target opponent sacrifices a permanent.
5/5
Just a loose idea that I wanted to throw out for a while now, creating a tribal eldrazi legend (based on Shub Niggurath of Lovecraftian fame) that allows for all of your devoid creatures/spells. Wasn't sure if producing a non-titan eldrazi legend would feel a bit too odd but I wanted to finally push this out and see how people feel.
While I've loved the idea of a colorless EDH deck, it is impossible to stick in the sort of secondary commander (such as Varchild, Wasitori, or Xantcha) that we've seen in nearly every commander deck for the past 2 years. A one-color deck could potentially have a colorless secondary commander but wizards couldn't slip a 4th legendary creature (whether old or new) into a colorless deck without making a 4th commander option for that deck.
Just something to think about.